These days on a private jet you not only can fly wherever you want whenever you want, you can also dine en route on whatever you want. Caterers like Alison Price On Air and Bon Soirée of London and Hubert-Marsden Catering of Zurich, Switzerland can provide anything from fois gras with black truffle to chateaubriand with bordelaise sauce to Beluga caviar.

Ten years ago, nobody even talked about lighting aircraft cabins with LEDs. Today, not an airplane rolls out of a completion center that isn’t LED from nose to tail. The result: illumination that’s brighter, lower maintenance, longer lasting and more economical.

As the industry recovers from the long recession, sales of used and new aircraft are accelerating. Largely as a result, more and more independent completion and refurbishment shops are building a backlog of orders.

As soon as its first owner departs from the manufacturer’s delivery center, a new airplane technically becomes used (or preowned). For various reasons, however, 10 years after an aircraft’s final production date is generally considered the milestone separating “newer” used business aircraft from “older” ones.

Some new or dramatically upgraded business jets have recently been certified, and manufacturers anticipate FAA approval for 19 more models over the next several years. Assuming the global economy improves, demand for them should be strong.
Here’s a look at the latest bizjet crop.

More than a decade ago, I was standing on a ramp at a California airport with an investment banker and his Dassault Falcon 900. Between incessant taps on his Blackberry, he was discussing the airplane and how he used it.

When is it time to buy your own jet? Part of the answer involves tax numbers, depreciation data, return on investment projections and the like; but if those are the sorts of factors you’re pondering right now, you should put down this article and pick up some of the many BJT features that address such concerns in detail.